Samaria Gorge National Park, Sfakia

Featuring a dramatic feature of Crete's landscape, Samaria Gorge National Park serves as a major tourist attraction and a protected biosphere reserve, famous for sheltering the extremely rare kri-kri goats. Each year nearly 200,000 people walk through the national park's famous gorge, which starts at an altitude of 1,250 m (4,100 ft) and ends on the shores of the Libyan Sea. To avoid the worst of the crowds, start your hike as early in the day as you can. You cannot camp overnight in the gorge, so you must complete the 16 km (9 mi) hike in a single day. To discover the gorge in the company of other hikers, join a guided excursion through the park. Put Samaria Gorge National Park at the forefront of your travel plans using our Sfakia trip builder .

An excursion during great weather in May, thanks to the reprocessing after the extreme rain a short time ago, the gorge had reopened. We did the hike from top to bottom. The hiking trails are well developed and countless resting places and toilets. Overcoming the river over various stones or bridges leads to a nice change. The degree of ambition is rather low due to the well-developed paths. There were also hikers travelling with flip-flops (completely pointless). This hike you can also start from the bottom up, would have been more amazing for us as this constant mountain is very much on your knees. Arriving at the end of the gorge you can take a minibus to the fishing village. However, it is only about 1.5 km and can be run well and sees some great old bridges. In the end in the village there are plenty of opportunities for tasting and then we went back by ferry. FAZIT: Great area, great pictures, beautiful vegetation and a hike of about 16 km.